Legal Secretary - (Real Estate)

Role title: Secretary

Location: London or Bristol [role dependent]

Job type: Full Time, Permanent

Reports to: Secretarial Manager

Main purpose of the role:

To provide fee-earners with proactive and high-quality secretarial support that appropriately meets their requirements, enabling them to focus on providing legal services to clients and reducing the need for them to undertake administrative tasks.

Key relationships:

• Daily contact with Partners and Associates for work allocation.

• Daily contact with other secretaries and team administrators within and across practice group(s) to provide/request assistance.

• Regular contact with your Secretarial Co-ordinator or Secretarial Manager for wider work distribution.

• Occasional contact with Secretarial Manager for escalations or issues.

• Building and maintaining relationships with colleagues and key stakeholders.

Diary and contact management:

•  Proactively manage and maintain fee-earners' diaries, scheduling appointments and co-ordinating internal and external client meetings and ensure all work activities are scheduled effectively, including the identification and resolution of potential challenges and clashes.

• Having a good knowledge of fee earners clients, liaising with their PAs. •Monitor individual responses for meetings and update fee-earner(s) as required. Ensure fee-earners have relevant materials and information in advance of each meeting.

• Arrange the booking of conference rooms, video conference facilities, taxis refreshments, restaurants, and liaising with meeting attendees, both internal and external. •Monitoring and responding to post and/or emails, prioritising correspondence to enable fee-earners to focus on urgent matters and using initiative to route emails to the appropriate individuals for swift response and action; wherever possible, responding to and filing emails on behalf of fee-earners to reduce volume •Organising travel arrangements through the firm’s travel company, booking and confirmation of reservations, flights, hotels, car transfers, ordering currency and expense claims and producing detailed itineraries.

Administrative tasks:

• Day-to-day administrative tasks such as photocopying, scanning and demonstrating the ability to delegate to appropriate department(s) and team administrators, when necessary, e.g. for organising large volume printing, photocopying, document production.

• Effectively manage new client matter opening and any additional tasks and duties relating to this process, following Service Excellence workbooks and process throughout.

• Organise document management, including closing of files, archiving and ensure that all relevant documents are filed electronically and paper-based, if required.

• Dealing with and submission of travel invoices and expense claims using Chrome River.

• Submitting invoices for payment through the Accounts Payable team and monitoring progress.

• Demonstrate an understanding of the end-to-end billing process and AX (Financial system); assisting fee-earners by proactively leading on relevant administrative processes, to ensure that bills are completed within required timeframe.

• Prepare WIP reports to be reviewed by fee-earners.

• Supporting fee-earners, Secretarial Co-ordinator or Group Head on time recording (Intapp), including reporting as required.

• Supporting fee-earners with maintenance of InterAction; ensure new business contact details are entered and contacts from fee-earners Outlook address book are shared, updating changes of contact and entering activities when a M&BD activity is planned with a client or target by own fee-earner, proactively downloading and printing reports on contacts ahead of meetings and pitches with the contact.

• Supporting team in updating information on the SharePoint intranet or in managing and maintaining particular pages.

• Supporting fee-earners with the preparation of speaker CVs and formatting of speaker materials, RSVP management for events sponsored by own fee-earner by responding to MS Team calls and email enquiries from interested delegates, responding to fee-earners’ queries about attending delegates using InterAction reporting function, notifying own fee-earners about events that are coming up in their/other office when visiting using intranet events calendar and notifying the organiser if fee-earner wishes to attend. 

Preparation of key documents and correspondence:

• Drafting letters and correspondence as required.

• Proof-reading all work to ensure that completed documents are delivered accurately and to a consistently high standard

• Preparation of agendas, presentations and meeting papers, including print production and timely distribution and chasing papers for meetings and ensuring that fee-earners have papers and adequate preparation time. •Submit edits and format changes to bids, pitches and other client documents to Document Management Centre and monitor progress.

• Drafting letters and correspondence as required. •Sourcing fee-earners’ CVs for pitches and co-ordinating the update of the CVs for the pitch then submission to the BD contact by required deadline and/or submission of pitch documents where online submission is required.

• Support with presentations for client training, seminars and conferences if required by submitting to Document Management Centre to ensure they meet the firm’s branding and house style guidelines.

• Maintenance of CVs; maintaining fee-earner CVs on CV Bank and the website to include entering content changes as directed by fee-earners, and proactively supporting the quarterly CV review by printing all versions of own fee-earners’ CVs from CV bank for review and mark-up, proactively asking fee-earners about adding new deals and cases to their CV upon completion of a matter.

Person Specification:

Education / Qualifications / Experience:

• Experience working as a secretary within a professional services environment 

Knowledge and Technical Skills:

• Good working knowledge of all Microsoft applications

• Experience of working with house-styles and branding

• Good working knowledge of document and client relationship management systems, OCR/PDF software and financial recording applications

General Skills:

• Client service orientated approach

• A proven working understanding of teamwork •Problem solving skills and solutions focused •Advanced communication skills at all levels

Self-management, ability to take ownership and excellent organisational skills, with the ability to prioritise work calmly and effectively in a pressurised environment

• Accountability and professionalism

• Business and organisation awareness •Ability to develop self and others •Attention to detail and discretion with confidential information Able to work effectively as part of a diverse and inclusive team Creative and forward-thinking approach to tasks

Other requirements:

• Flexibility with working hours as required and willingness to work extra and on occasion unsociable hours when required.

• Awareness of and adherence to the firm’s policies and values.

Some key information 

• We offer a competitive package including bonuses dependant on role/level, private medical insurance and pension contribution.  

• Our global skills academy provides our people, regardless of their role and location, with excellent learning opportunities (including live workshops, podcasts, short videos and practical learning experiences).   

• We have adopted a hybrid working approach with a requirement for a minimum of three days in the office with flexibility dependant on role/team/client demands.  

• We are proud to rank as a top 30 Employer for Working Families and a top 25 Employer for Social Mobility.    •We have a range of social and sports committees, summer and winter parties and monthly get togethers.   

• We have a range of diversity networks to connect people and celebrate our differences which is integral to our inclusive culture.   

• All UK offices have their own artwork collections – including Damien Hurst and Tracey Emin pieces in the London office. We have a long-standing history in supporting the art community especially up-and-coming artists.   

Equal Opportunities:

We are committed to promoting equality and diversity in the firm and to equal opportunities in employment.

We believe in equality of opportunity regardless of race or racial group (including colour, nationality, ethnicity, national origins), religion or belief, age, disability, sexual orientation, sex, gender re-assignment and gender identity, marriage and civil partnership, and pregnancy, maternity and paternity.  This also includes any incidents of perceptive or associative discrimination and harassment. We ensure that those who serve or who have served in the armed forces, and their families, are treated fairly during the recruitment and selection processes.

At our firm we seek to attract and retain talented people from a diverse range of backgrounds and cultures, to create an exciting and rewarding place to work.  We are supportive of flexible working arrangements wherever possible and we would encourage you to discuss this with us, should this be something you are interested in.